Drinkable Chicken

So I installed Gentoo Linux the other day… I then spent most of Friday night and Saturday (I know, I am lame =) trying to set the console font to a size that I liked.

Backstory: Gentoo insists on booting up in a resolution of 1024×768 on the iMac, and then sets the console dimensions to 128×48, which leads to a font that is just a little too small for me to read comfortably on this screen. So I spent a lot of time trying to set the resolution to 800×600, hoping that this would lead to a larger font. Under OS X, that resolution works fine, but under Gentoo, the machine refuses to recognize it. Or rather, it ignores video settings that I pass, or the screen goes blank and the computer seems to hang. Pretty weird. At some point I even tracked down the driver in the kernel source, changed it to boot into 800×600, recompiled and reinstalled… which had the same effect as manually setting the resolution, i.e. the computer hangs.

So eventually I started looking for larger console fonts. There aren’t many… there’s the Sigma font, and Terminus… I am using that last one now, and I don’t like it too much, but at least I can read what I’m writing. :-) Fortunately, the sources of both fonts are available, which means I can change them to my liking, or create my own font (eventually). ^_^

Other than that, Gentoo works great on the iMac. Network worked right out of the box, which is essential as many packages can be downloaded using emerge.

Well, back to my hacking configuration hell… :-)

So, I got my old/new iMac yesterday. I figured I’d try installing Gentoo on it, and if that didn’t work, try an easier install like Ubuntu or Yellow Dog. As it happens, the install worked fine. I did a minimal install, compiled the kernel, etc… and to my surprise, ended up with a working Linux system. :-) (I expected it to be crazy difficult, but it wasn’t so bad.)

I recommend trying this; it’s a great learning experience when you don’t know much about what makes Linux tick. I learned a lot, anyway.

Although the PPC version is not “official” (it’s supported by the community), it appears to be up-to-date and the installation went well. Granted, there were a few parts in the handbook that worked a bit differently in the newest version of Gentoo, but nothing I couldn’t figure out. Overall, the manual did an excellent job of guiding me through all the steps (many of which I had never done before, like setting up a file system from the command line, or preparing and compiling a kernel).

Now I just need to find a way to set the text mode to something lower than 128×48, and I’m golden… =)